Paratext’s Reference Universe is the only research database that provides both collection-level scope and index-level analysis of Major Reference Works. Now, SAGE Reference’s award-winning, authoritative, and interdisciplinary print and online works in the social sciences will be accessible to the students and researchers across the globe who use the Reference Universe service. Continue reading SAGE Reference titles now indexed in Paratext’s Reference Universe→

Yesterday, Paratext’sReference Universe launched several new enhancements to the interface. The enhancements were completed based on suggestions from library clients. For those not familiar with Reference Universe, here is a brief description, taken from the website: Reference Universe includes data not contained in any other service, and is designed to illuminate your library’s carefully-crafted collection at the deepest possible level. It contains dense metadata to over 45,000 electronic and print encyclopedias, unlocking previously overlooked content, expanding the boundaries and opening up new pathways of research.

Highlights include:

Fewer Clicks. Selecting a Title from your results sets will now immediately show all relevant article titles and index entries on a single page; emphasizing the uniquemetadata found only through Reference Universe.

Clearer Results. Distinguish between electronic and print titles with one simple click.

ALDIE, Va., April 3, 2013 — Paratext announces that thousands of links to nearly 250 Major Reference Works from Elsevier’s ScienceDirect will be integrated into Paratext’sReference Universe service.

Elsevier’s Major Reference Works provide foundational content that gives cross-disciplinary perspective to researchers, librarians, teachers and students worldwide. They serve a broad spectrum of scientific, technical and medical disciplines, and routinely win awards for their authoritative and detailed coverage.

Paratext’s Reference Universe is the only research database that provides both collection-level scope and index-level analysis of Major Reference Works.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Reference Universe, it’s a great little product that indexes the content of reference works. They have thousands of entries and add new content regularly. They announced this week new content from Grove Art Online and Grove Music Online. Below is the text from their blog post.

Paratext is pleased to announce that detailed metadata from Grove Art Online and Grove Music Online from Oxford University Press are now integrated into Reference Universe.

Paratext is pleased to announce that links to the reference works from the Sharpe Online Reference collection have been added to the nearly 50,000 scholarly subject encyclopedias and other reference titles accessible via Reference Universe. Sharpe Online Reference (SOLR) includes the titles that make up the U.S. and Global History and Culture collections. SOLR brings together award-wining subject coverage, the convenience and flexibility of online research and a fresh new approach to digital content ownership.

You can find the full press release here. Additional information about Paratext resources can be found at www.paratext.com.

From a Paratext Press Release: Paratext announces that thousands of links to more than 125 major reference works on Wiley Online Library will be integrated into Paratext’s Reference Universe service. Wiley Online LibraryWiley Online Library, launched last summer provides access to the peer-reviewed, award-winning content published by Wiley-Blackwell, including Wiley-VCH. Over 125 reference works deliver the benchmarks of scientific and scholarly reference across a range of subjects.
You can find the full press release here. Additional information about Paratext resources can be found at www.paratext.com

Paratext announced another new enhancement to the Reference Universe service, namely, you’ll now find your library’s e-reference collections more clearly branded within your library’s Reference Universe query, making it easier for you to focus in on the resources you value the most.

This new display feature will considerably increase the visibility and awareness of these valuable e-resources, helping both improve your patrons’ research experience and ensure that you get the most out of your e-reference subscriptions.

Paratext has integrated thousands of links to more than 150 Major Reference Works from Springer into the Reference Universe service. Paratext’s Reference Universe is the only cross-searchable database that supports article and index-level discovery of major reference works from more than 750 imprints. The service focuses exclusively on subject encyclopedias and scholarly compendia–the authoritative introductory material which research librarians consistently identify as the key starting point for better quality research. All Reference Universe searches are dynamically matched to each library’s existing electronic and print holdings.

Springer’s electronic and print Major Reference Works are the mainstay of specialist research, serving a broad spectrum of scientific, technical and medical disciplines, and routinely winning awards for their authoritative and detailed coverage.

Paratext has made some changes to the interface of Reference Universe. RU is a great discovery tool for print and online reference collections as it provides a searchable index of the entries and TOC of reference sources. Here are some of the changes you’ll see:

A â€˜Location’ snapshot, showing results in both e- and print form instantly.

Reference Universe, from Paratext, has added links to several popular reference works including:

full text links to CQ Researcher, 1991- present, over 800 citations

many new titles in CREDO Reference including over 2 million citations to 389 CREDO Reference titles

1000+ titles from Gale’s Virtual Reference Library from 2008-2009 are also being loaded into the system this month, bringing the total number of citations in Reference Universe to more than 25 million

Additionally, Paratext has developed and is testing APIs that send Reference Universe data dynamically to many discovery layers, allowing all your patrons to see the results of a Reference Universe (RU) query alongside your other relevant results. This access has the potential to truly bring your reference collection front and center, while losing none of the benefits of our native search interface. Please contact Eric Calaluca directly for more information on these developments (ericc@paratext.com).

AUSTIN, Texas (February 11, 2010)-Paratext announces the addition of links to 450 e-titles within Blackwell Reference Online from the Reference Universe platform.
Blackwell Reference Online brings together Wiley–Blackwell’s critically acclaimed Blackwell Companions and Handbooks, as well as major encyclopedias, including the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology and the International Encyclopedia of Communication. Continue reading Blackwell Reference Online Now Accessible through Reference Universe→

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Eric Calaluca, Founder and President of Paratext. Eric and I discussed the Reference Universe product and how it promotes the use of both print and ereference collections. Listen to the interview here.

I love widgets. Last week at the Charleston Conference I was on a panel discussing “bridging the google gap.” I was to discuss ways libraries were bridging that gap through reference services. Widgets was one of my answers.

There are many eBook/eReference vendors who provide widgets. I’ve got links to some of them below. If you know of others, send them my way and I’ll post.

Credo Reference – Search the entire Credo collection with their widget. Some libraries have put the search widget on a reference page, as a starting point. Now that Credo links to other sources through their “resource links” feature, users can start with traditional reference sources and move to journals or other databases of your choosing. For a look at this feature, check out the Watne Memorial Library . You might also be interested in an informal review of the new Credo interface.

Gale/Cengage – GVRL in particular. I am fond of this widget because you can establish subject collections of sets of titles. Once you have the collection established, it can be placed in the widget and only those titles searched. This is a fab idea for subject guides/pathfinders, or for class assignment links.

Reference Universe – RU searches the indexes, TOC, and list of articles of both print and electronic reference titles. Using your online catalog, they will connect the user to a reference source. The widget opens up your entire reference collection. St. Mary’s College of California has a great example of this widget. Be sure to click on “reference.”

If you’ve ever heard me give a presentation about eBooks, then you’ve probably heard my soap box rant about the plethora of eBook platforms. I can’t stand it. I look forward to the day when all of my e-content – reference, monographs, textbooks, whatever – will be on one consistent platform, fully searchable by keyword and every other possible facet. With ALA Annual coming up in June, I am asking all of you who feel the same to please remind the publishers that we want one platform for our electronic content. I know I’m not alone here. I’ve just heard some rumors from a publisher that librarians in Japan asked for the exact same thing – one central platform!

Make access a priority. The best way to drive business to e-reference is through the online catalog. Make sure all MARC records are in the catalog with persistent links to the e-books. Strive to use as few interfaces as possible. Our comparison chart lists 6 vendors, each with a unique interface and special features; how can we make things simpler? Purchase titles to own, and get the licensing agreement to provide a copy of the e-book in either the HTML, XML, or PDF version. With this data, libraries can mount all e-book content on 1 platform, like Ebrary, or an open-source product, like XTF. Or purchase from vendors that support multiple publishers in one platformGale Virtual Reference Library is a good example. Another good option for access is through Paratext’s Reference Universe, which indexes the table of contents, entries, and thousands of print and electronic titles. It’s a deeper search than the catalog, uses one interface, and has persistent links to the article level of e-books and to the catalog record of print titles. When shopping around, talk to publishers about access, and remind them that fewer interfaces make for simple searching by users and librarians.

Reference Universe
Here is a database that librarians will really appreciate. We have spent countless hours selecting, storing, and carefully weeding our reference collections. But patrons would rather search on the Internet, and get any old answer, than use our pride and joy, our reference collections. Reference Universe has taken article titles and indexes from more than 2,000 reference works “from both major and minor reference publishers.” These entries have been compiled into a user-friendly database that covers topics from a wide variety of disciplines. It is searchable by singular or plural forms, word variants, exact phrase, or exact words. It also includes searches by all of the words and any of the words. Searches can be limited by publication date and by number of hits (the default being 1,000). A Browse Mode allows users to browse for books by publisher, title of work, subject, or Library of Congress classification number or to browse the Reference Universe index of terms.
After searching, the system presents a list of reference titles in relevancy-ranked order. Besides the title, the brief display includes publisher and date and the total number of index entries or article titles containing the term. There are also links to the local catalog, a full-text e-book version if it is available, article titles and index terms, and a fuller bibliographic record. The full record in turn links to other reference books on the subject, other reference books by the author, the record in MARC format, and a review from ARBA Online, available to subscribing libraries. A notes field generally contains brief bibliographic information. As of this writing, Paratext plans to add reviews and publisher links and has installed a prototype that will automatically indicate whether a library owns a title that appears in a list of results.
Do you remember First Stop: The Master Index to Subject Encyclopedias, published by Oryx Press in 1989? Reference Universe has a similar idea but with a modern interface. Titles indexed seem to have good recency, and keeping the electronic version up-to-date will be easier than updating a printed version. General searches will produce many hits. It may take discernment to determine which subject encyclopedia is best for a particular query, but because this is a librarian’s tool, finding the best references for a patron shouldn’t be a problem.
This metaindex is an exciting product that will get a lot of use at reference desks in both public and academic libraries and also has uses as a collection development tool. Highly recommended. Jack O’Gorman

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